


American Beauty

by apodiopsys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:54:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apodiopsys/pseuds/apodiopsys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They start losing their minds at the same time. Now it's just a race to the finishing line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	American Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Crazy is fun. Title and a quote in the fic belong to the movie American Beauty.

There’s a stretch of time where they spend a week (two weeks, maybe three) sleeping in the Impala. It doesn’t matter that they wake up stiff and sore, honestly getting to be too old for sleeping in a car. It wasn’t that big of a deal, once upon a time when they were young and skinny and wiry, fresh faced with muscles that bounced back like rubber balls. Sam doesn’t know why they do it, but Dean doesn’t deal well with enclosed spaces, rooms that smell like cigarette smoke and cheap sex and scratchy laundry detergent. 

So they drive by motels and park off of the highway - in 24 hour fast food parking lots, camping grounds where they’re surrounding by RVs - and the only thing between them and the stars is the roof of the Impala, keeping them safe from now to forever. 

Inside, Dean gets twitchy a lot, and sometimes when they’re in the coroners office examining the body or just at a gas station, paying for fuel for the boys and their baby, he has to excuse himself and walk out the door with as much dignity as he still possesses. Sam comes out after, gives him five ten fifteen minutes to try and pull himself together and even then he sometimes finds him there, bent over at the middle and gasping for air. 

He can’t do much for his brother; Sam can’t fight the demons that are in his head, so he ignores the way Lucifer tells him _I’m taking him from you too. You get the pleasure of watching him go bananas and I get the pleasure of watching you follow._ and does his best to shield Dean from himself. It isn’t easy but he coaxes him out of himself with small touches and kisses that promise more, all while the devil sits on his shoulder and sings like a mockingbird. While he’s falling apart, Dean is falling faster, tripping over himself in his haste to rip himself apart at the seams. 

Some days, Dean is clearer than others, laughing eyes and easy smiles. He’s loose limbed under Sam, one hand clasping the neck of a beer bottle and the other hooked around the back of Sam’s neck, pulling him down to slip a kiss past his lips. He misses his brother most on days like these, when he’s so close to scratching the surface. But even then he sees it in his eyes, that tiny crazy spark that lingers beyond the deep green pools. 

On clear days Sam spreads Dean out and kisses him like every single one is the last, touches his skin like it’s the first time and loves him so hard and so much he might combust. He possesses him the way he won’t be able to when Dean doesn’t belong to him but to an angel who betrayed them and the rest of his demons tormenting his soul. 

They park the car in an empty picnic ground off the highway after midnight. Sam sleeps in the backseat and Dean stretches out in the front, but not before he steals a kiss, two kisses and three, from lips that don’t quite resist him. He almost doesn’t feel bad for it, sighs, “Dean,” as he falls asleep. When he wakes, it’s early morning, too early for the five hours of sleep he had. It takes him a moment to register why he’s even awake, beyond the dull ache in his back, but then - 

_Guess the banana’s starting to peel._ Lucifer is resting his chin on his arm, leering at him from the front of the Impala. He’s sitting in the front seat, one leg propped up in a way that can’t be comfortable and he looks like a sick caricature of Dean. Sam’s heart twists at the sight, because Dean _isn’t there_. His boot gets caught as he stumbles out of the door, but on doing a three sixty of the area he knows that his brother isn’t anywhere close. He tries to think like Dean (where would he go if he were on the brink of losing his mind?) and heads for the path that leads up to a hill and presumably down the other side. 

The hill dips down and then up into a smaller one, and up and down and up but Sam keeps walking because he _knows_ that this is where he would go, and he finds him finally in the valley between one hill and the next, sitting on a bench that’s evidently materialized out of nowhere. 

Sam doesn’t realize until he’s up close and practically on top of him that one of their guns is lying on the bench a foot away from Dean’s hand. 

He releases a shaky breath, kneeling next to him first and then sitting next to him on the bench. Dean looks dazed, and even at just after seven in the morning the sky is blue and it reflects back from his glassy eyes. They aren’t touching, not quite. Sam is afraid of pushing him too far, but then he jerks and turns his face and his eyes are clear, so clear, startlingly _clear_. “I was going to...” he starts vaguely, and then. “But sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it... and my heart is going to cave in.” 

Throat prickling, Sam looks at his brother and tries not to let his own heart cave in. Dean looks at him from under his eyelashes, draws him in close and touches his lips to his, to the corner of his mouth and his cheek and his jaw. He sighs Sam’s name like a Hail Mary, like he’s begging for redemption and forgiveness all rolled into one. 

And he smoothes his hand up Sam’s arm, up his shoulder and neck, fingers tucked up into his hair, and Dean’s other hand reaches out and brushes past the cool metal of salvation.


End file.
